Bridge Documentation

This bridge is similar to the
Market Street Bridge but the
Newell Bridge retains a vastly higher degree of historic integrity, having
no major alterations or loss of original material.

This bridge is an impressive cable suspension bridge with
riveted Double-Intersection Warren through truss stiffening. The main cable
is a wire cable, while the suspenders are steel rods with eyes and
turnbuckles. The bridge has been noted as one of the first suspension
bridges to have been built entirely of steel as opposed to wrought iron.
This is not the result of anything spectacular, it is merely a function of
its 1905 construction date. Prior to 1900 wrought iron was widely used for
metal highway bridges because it was less expensive. During that time steel
was also produced but was used for railroad rails where the stronger steel
was a requirement, and this drove up the prices of steel, while wrought iron
remained affordable. However, after 1900, steel became readily
available and wrought iron quickly became a thing of the past.

The bridge's stiffening trusses have two styles of sway bracing that changes
from every other panel. One is v-laced design whose height tapers at each
end, and the other is made of two lightweight beams that also has attractive
curved knee bracing curling above and below the lower beams, and below the
upper beam. The merger of the upper beam's knee bracing and the upper knee
brace of the lower sway bracing beam create a half-circle appearance. There
is also a couple spots where there is a third built-up box beam acting as
sway bracing.

The Newell Bridge is historically significant as one of
the last few remaining suspension bridges on the Ohio River. There used to
be many more, but they have been destroyed one way or another. It is also
among the oldest bridges remaining on the Ohio River. The Ohio River has
been devastated by the repeated frequent demolition of major historic
bridges and so the surviving historic bridges on the Ohio River are becoming
more and more critical to prioritize for preservation. The bridge is also
significant because it documents the suspension bridge type as it was being
used in the period very well, and as such is a good representative example
of the technology.

The Newell Bridge is a privately owned toll bridge, that
was owned by a company originally known as the Newell Bridge Company, then
the Newell bridge and Railway Company, and today the Homer Laughlin China
Company. The bridge has been extremely well maintained. Private bridge
owners do what is most fiscally responsible for the profitability of their
investment, and that is to properly maintain the bridge, and perform larger
rehabilitation projects as needed. Private owners realize that ignoring
routine maintenance and then demolishing and replacing the bridge is more
costly. Government agencies should take note of this, since they often
instead waste tax dollars by neglecting old and historic bridges until they
deteriorate then they demolish and replace them.

The toll house on this bridge appears to have riveted roof
trusses and as such it is certainly old and may be original along with the
bridge.

The historic bridge inventory mentions that E. K. Morse of
Pittsburgh was consulting engineer. This is assumed to be Edwin Kirtland
Morse. He was an engineer for the Morse Bridge Company of Youngstown, Ohio
who begin doing engineering consultation on his own in Pittsburgh after the
Morse Bridge Company went out of business.

Information and Findings From Ohio's Historic Bridge
Inventory

Setting/Context

The toll bridge carries a 2-lane road and sidewalk
over the Ohio River between Newell, W.Va., and East Liverpool, Ohio. The
Homer Laughlin China factory complex is on the West Virginia end of the
bridge. The bridge's northern (Ohio) approach spans cross over the
4-lane US 30. Ohio DOT BMS inventories the two truss approach spans, and
WVDOT inventories the main suspension span over the river, but
historically they are all part of the same privately-owned toll bridge
structure.

The Newell Toll Bridge's history is closely associated
with that of the Homer Laughlin China Company, a company significant in
the history of the region's ceramics industry and for more than a
century a major employer in the region that has had a significant impact
on the development of East Liverpool and Newell. The bridge was built in
1904-05 by the Newell Bridge Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of the
Homer Laughlin China Company (HLC). HLC was established in 1871 by Homer
& Shakespeare Laughlin as the Ohio Valley Pottery Works in East
Liverpool. In 1897, the Laughlins sold control of the company to W. E.
Wells, Louis I. Aaron and his sons Marcus and Charles Aaron. Wells and
the Aarons raised significant capital and began expanding the company.
First they built two new works (Nos. 2 & 3) in East Liverpool between
1897 and 1903, but finding no further suitable sites on the Ohio side of
the river, they chose to expand to the West Virginia side in 1904. To do
so, they formed the North American Manufacturing Company to build the
company town of Newell. They also formed the Newell Bridge Company to
build a bridge connecting Newell with the company's works and corporate
offices in East Liverpool, as well as a streetcar company to operate a
3-mile-long rail line that crossed the bridge. From 1906 to 1929, the
Newell Works was expanded five times with Works No. 4 to No. 8, the last
built in 1929 expressly for pottery sold by Woolworths stores. By the
1920s HLC was claiming to be the largest pottery in the world. It has
also abandoned its earlier smaller works in East Liverpool and
concentrated its works entirely in Newell. Although the bridge no longer
served to connect active works on both sides of the river, it remained a
vital transportation link for HLC employees. HLC was a major economic
force in its industry, and an innovator in the design of mass-produced
dinnerware, with perhaps its most famous line the solid-colored
Fiestaware in 1936, noted as a major departure from the European styles
that had dominated the market up until the 1920s.

Physical Description

The Newell Toll Bridge is a suspension bridge with a
750'-long main span flanked by steel truss approach spans. The cable
suspension bridge has built-up steel towers and is conventionally
composed of wrapped steel wire cables with wire suspenders and a
stiffening truss. The stiffening truss is a riveted, double-intersection
Warren configuration which transitions to simply supported thru-truss
approach spans.

Integrity

The bridge appears to retain integrity of design and
materials.

Summary of Significance

The Newell Toll Bridge is historically significant
for its associations with the development of the Homer Laughlin China
Company and the company town of Newell, W.Va. (Criterion A). The Newell
Bridge Company applied to the War Department for a permit to build over
navigable water and was awarded the permit in 1903. The permit was
modified in 1904 when the alignment of the bridge was shifted 75' north
from the original proposed alignment due to difficulty acquiring clear
title to the approach on the Ohio side. The bridge's design was by
consulting engineer E. K. Morse of Pittsburgh. Construction contracts
were awarded in May 1904 with the steel work awarded to the American
Bridge Company of Pittsburgh and the substructure work to Mr. C. M.
Driver, also of Pittsburgh.

The 1905 Newell Toll Bridge is one of
ten suspension bridges in the inventory dated from 1867 to 1931. The
bridge is not generally recognized as a technologically significant
example of its type/design, but it is representative of period
construction technology and is perhaps most noteworthy for its use of
riveted double-intersection Warren trusses. This is technologically
significance as one of two examples of the double-intersection Warren
design in the inventory (July 2009), and it is among the earlier
applications of riveted truss field connections (see Warren truss
context) (Criterion C).

Whether a modest footbridge or a
long-span highway bridge, the principles of the suspension technology
are the same. A continuous cable supports the deck by means of
suspenders. The cable is in tension, and thus materials such as rope,
bamboo, and wire, with a high resistance in tension, are very suitable
and usually quite economical. A disadvantage to the suspension
technology is that the passage of moving loads causes considerable
deformation and oscillations of the deck. Only when the live load is
small compared with the weight of the deck is the oscillation minimized.
The bridge type has thus been most suitable in modern times for
long-span, heavy, highway bridges.

The suspension bridge type is
of great antiquity with centuries' old examples known in China, India,
Africa, and South America, using bamboo or rope made of natural
materials such as hemp for the cables. The wire cable suspension bridge
technology dates to the early 19th century. The first known suspension
bridge in the U.S. to be built using iron wire cables was a crossing of
the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia built by wire makers Josiah White
and Erskine Hazard in 1816. The golden age of wire cable suspension
bridges commenced in the mid-19th century with the best-known builder
and engineer John August Roebling. He not only constructed several
monumental bridges Niagara River (1851-55, non-extant),
Cincinnati-Covington Ohio River Bridge (1856-1867), and, of course, the
Brooklyn Bridge (1867-1876) but established a successful wire cable
company near Trenton, New Jersey, in 1849. The improvement of wire cable
manufacturing technology was significant, because it made readily
available cables for a variety of industrial applications from mining to
logging, as well as bridge building. There are many distinguished
examples of wire cable suspension bridges throughout the U.S., from the
modest Wire Bridge in New Portland, Maine (ca. 1864-66) to the great
suspension bridges of the 20th century, such as the George Washington
(1927-31) and the Golden Gate (1933-37).

The eligibility of the
Newell Toll Bridge has not been previously considered by either WVDOT or
ODOT (Apr. 2009) (Communication with C. Fint, WVDOT).

Justification

The bridge is one of 10 suspension bridges
inventory. The bridge type is used for both pedestrian and vehicular
bridges starting with Roebling's 1856-67 Cincinnati bridge. This later
example, representative of the type/design, has a moderate level of
significance.